mmm CASE 9.1% 9 STUDENT SURROGATES IN MARKET RESEARCH ¢ Researchers in both the business world and the academic world often treat college students as representative of the adult population. This practice reduces sampling costs enormously, but its effectiveness is open to question. An experiment was performed to determine the suitability of using student surrogates in research The study used three groups of people: 1, The first consisted of 59 adults (18 years of age or older) chosen so that they represented by age and occupation the adult population of a midwestern state. 2. The second consisted of 42 students enrolled in an introductory marketing course at a public university. Many of the students were registered in a business program, but few were marketing majors. 3. The third consisted of 33 students enrolled inan advanced marketing course, almost all of whom were marketing majors. * Adapted from R. Kesavan, D. G. Anderson, and ©. Mascarenhas, “Students as Surrogates in Advertising Research,” Developments in Marketing Science 7 (1984): 438-41378 ~~ -Part2__ Statistical Inference TABLE A COMPARISON OF RESPONSES OF INTRODUCTORY MARKETING STUDENTS, ADVANCED MARKETING STUDENTS, AND ADULTS: BELIEVABILITY OF AD Introductory Marketing Advanced Marketing Students. Students Adults Advertisement s x x s 1 . 67 25 6.6 3.1 69 27 73° 26 72 23 6.1 3.0 3 59 27 6.6 28 7.0 29 TABLE B COMPARISON OF RESPONSES OF INTRODUCTORY MARKETING STUDENTS, ADVANCED MARKETING STUDENTS, AND ADULTS: INTEREST IN AD Introductory Marketing Advanced Marketing Students Students. Adults: Advertisement s ea s 1 45 28 59 24 6.0 29 3 40 3.1 The experiment consisted of showing each group a sequence of three 30- second television advertisements dealing with financial institutions. Each respon- dent was asked to assess each commercial on the basis of believability and interest. The responses were recorded on a 10-point graphic rating scale, where a higher rating represented greater believability or interest. The responses were treated as interval data, and the sample means and standard deviations were calculated. These are shown in Tables A and B. What conclusions can you draw regarding the suitability of using students as surrogates in marketing research?